Dead Frost

by Adam Millard

  'Forty-two,' Jared said, pointing a finger towards a sign at the edge of the road. 'And I'll be damned if you think I'm walking it.'

  To Shane, Marla said, 'We can look for a vehicle, try to find something to get us moving again, but we need warmth and we need something to eat. There's no point turning up in Jackson with no energy; for all we know the place is gonna be overrun with lurkers.'

  Shane's face contorted; he hadn't thought about that, not since the barracks.

  'You know she's making sense,' Terry said. He jumped up and down a few times on the spot in an attempt to keep warm.

  Shane span an about turn and put both hands behind his head. 'Shit!' he snarled. He turned back to face Terry and Marla, and when he did his face was full of strength, determination, steel. 'Okay,' he said. 'But first thing in the morning and we move forward. Remember, I didn't ask any of you along. You came through choice. If you don't like what I'm doing, then head back.' He thought for a moment before adding, 'You know I care about all of you, but my family are out there, somewhere. I just want to get to them...I just want them to be safe.'

  How did you respond to that. Marla wanted to grab the big fool and pull him into the tightest clench she could. If she did, though, she would probably keel over under her own pain.

  'We best get moving,' Terry said. 'We do not want to be stuck out here once the moon is up.'

  'Are you okay to walk?' Shane asked. Marla nodded, hissing as she put weight on her right foot. It hurt, but it wasn't broken.

  Just sprained. Being a doctor – or former-doctor – had its little perks, and one of those was: self-assessment.

  The Snatch was beyond repair; despite the thousands of dollars spent on extra armour, it was the mechanical equivalent of braindead. The front was a crumpled mess, and multicoloured cables and wires hung out of the bonnet like dead octopi tentacles. Even if they were able to get it running again – which would have been a feat of modern engineering – three of the four tyres were punctured. Two were already flat, while the third hissed as air slipped out through a glass-gouged hole.

  'Probably would have ended up crashing it anyway,' Marla said, faking a smile at her own optimistic prediction. The snow, however, made it more of a certainty than just a blind guess.

  'Did anyone see where that deer went?' Terry said as he scaled the embankment leading back up to the road. 'I always thought I would go back to vegetarian, but considering the current situation, a bit of venison never hurt anybody, did it?'

  Shane knew that Terry was honestly considering hunting the deer down, although he presumed it would be long gone by now, counting its lucky stars, or not really knowing how close it had come to bouncing off an armoured windshield.

  The sign said 42 MI – JACKSON, but it also said 3 MI – SANDOWN.

  'What do you think's in Sandown?' Marla said, limping, clinging onto Shane's shoulder until she was sure she had the strength, and the nerve, to walk on her lonesome.

  'Lurkers,' Terry said without taking a breath. 'Lots of lurkers, but plenty of food.'

  Terry was to be proved right on both counts.

  NINETEEN

  Things were bad; Susie Bloom knew it, Maggie Cox knew it, the entire goddam camp knew it, but there was nothing like a bit of icing on a cake, and that came in the form of silence.

  'Shhhh,' Susie said. 'Do you hear that?'

  'Mommy, you're scaring me,' Kelly said, latching onto her mother's cardigan.

  'It's okay, honey,' Susie said, stroking Kelly's hair. 'There's nothing there, but the generators appear to have stopped.'

  'Well, wouldn't that just be a splendid turn of events?' Maggie said, lighting a cigarette, coughing a few times, and then going in for a second, deeper drag.

  'I don't hear anything,' Kelly said in a high-pitched tone that suggested her mother was either hearing things, or had gone completely coco-loco.

  'That's what I'm afraid of,' Susie said.

  Henry Colburn, who was now tied to a chair in the middle of the corridor, began to tut. 'Tsk, tsk, tsk. You know what you need?' he asked, and despite his face being hidden by the darkness, it was evident that he was smiling. Grinning, even, like the maniac that he was.

  'Shut up,' Maggie said. 'You lost the privilege to talk when you tried to fucking kill me.'

  Kelly gasped as the curse-word resonated around the hallway. It was a funny word, though, wasn't it; Kelly thought so and began to silently mouth it to herself, though she would never dare to say it out loud. Not while her mother was around.

  'What you need is somebody to fix the generators,' Colburn continued. The fact that he was bound to a chair, at the mercy of two very pissed off ladies and a wet-behind-the-ears little girl seemed to have no bearing on him, at all. 'And I think you'll find that I'm the only fucker in this hellhole who has the slightest idea how to make 'em work again.'

  'Bullshit!' Susie said, and then apologised to Kelly, who was somewhat proud of her mother's outburst. 'You don't know a thing about those generators. You're a soldier, not a mechanic. The only thing you know is how to murder old ladies when they least expect it.' She paused, a beat, and then added, smiling, 'And you couldn't even do that right.'

  'I'm not that old,' Maggie said, slightly offended. 'I've just had a difficult life.'

  'I know how to make 'em run again,' he said, his voice hoarse and thick in the darkness. He spat, a globule of blood and bile landed at Susie's feet.

  'Well, you're quite the charmer, aren't you?' Maggie said, drawing on her cigarette and exhaling a plume of bluey-grey smoke. 'But if you think we're letting you go after what you tried to pull, you've got another thing coming.'

  And then, Henry Colburn did something that none of them expected. In fact, it caught Maggie so much by surprise that she almost fell into the wall.

  He laughed.

  And he laughed.

  He was like the evil villain in a James Bond movie, only worse. He was laughing so hard that tears began to stream down his face. If they thought he was a maniac before, then now he was totally fucking bonkers.

  'I'm not listening to this anymore,' Susie said, taking Kelly by the hand and leading her away from the lunatic in the chair. Maggie followed, although she couldn't help feeling a sense of foreboding, as if somewhere along the line this man, this wacko, was going to have to be untied. If he did know about the generators, the others would want to set him free – the lumberjack contingency would only be able to think of their families, and the fact that the nutjob who professed to hold the key to repair the generators was highly unstable would fall by the wayside.

  'You'll be back,' Colburn chuckled, practically foaming at the mouth. 'I guaran-fucking-tee it.'

  As Maggie hobbled forward – had she hurt her leg during the attack? She wasn't sure – she knew that everything had taken a turn for the worse.

  What about Victor Lord?

  What happens when he gets back from his little hunting expedition to find that his man has failed, been overpowered by a weak old lady and a mother? Surely there would be no happy-ending. No way, uh-huh.

  As Maggie Cox smoked her way down the stairs, back to the remnants of civilisation – if ever there could be such a thing – she prayed for God to take her the next time she fell asleep.

  Rather him than someone else.

  *

  Sandown was barely even a town. There were a few stores, raided of course, and in the middle of the square there was a bronze statue of a man on a horse. The figure sitting atop the steed actually reminded Shane of Governor Charles Dean, the man who had gone out of his way to make every prisoner in Jackson feel like a piss-puddle. He even had the same moustache, which bordered on Victorian and would not have looked out of place on the set of some ridiculous British period drama.

  'Well this is all kinds of creepy,' Marla said. The cut on her head had stopped bleeding and her eyes were once again focussed. For awhile back there, Shane had been concerned.

  'Looks like the whole town was overrun,' Terry said. He w
as holding the shotgun, ready for action, which made perfect sense as they were walking into the unknown.

  'Either that,' Shane said, 'or they're waiting, hiding out, hoping for someone to ride to their rescue.'

  'Well, good luck with that,' Marla muttered. 'We're all waiting to be rescued, it's just some of us have considered the possibility that the cavalry is no longer searching.'

  She was right; if there had been remaining government wouldn't they have tried to transmit, perhaps a short-wave radio message for all survivors. That was what happened in the movies; that was how it should have happened now.

  Of course it didn't, though. There was no Morgan Freeman to tell everyone to remain calm using that magnificent voice of his; there were no military heroes screaming “Get to da choppa!” whenever the shit hit the fan. This was real, it was happening without the aid of a film-crew and sound-engineers.

  Across the square was a small building. Shane would have used the word bungalow, had he known whether it was indeed the right word for the job. Nevertheless, he walked towards it, feet crunching through the snow. It was so deep, now, that his boots had started to fill up; he would have to find some taller boots, or failing that he would fashion a pair out of a couple of plastic bags and an elastic-band. He had seen that on the TV once.

  'What is it?' Jared asked, keeping close to Terry. The man holding the biggest gun was obviously the best man to stick by.

  'Looks like some sort of school,' Shane replied, rubbing his hands together and making a mental-note to add gloves to the list of Things to keep me alive.

  Marla kicked the sign next to the gate, forgetting that she had recently been involved in a very painful accident. She winced as the snow covering the sign dropped down, revealing the words SANDOWN ELEMENTARY – THE BEST START THEY COULD WISH FOR.

  'Yep,' Marla hissed through clenched teeth; the pain from being so stupid was obviously affecting her. 'It's a fucking school.'

  So Sandown had a school, a few shops – none of which looked apt to store anything useful, unless Marla decided to take up needlecraft during the night – and a bronze statue of a man that looked like someone Shane had previously detested with an unhealthy passion. It was hardly going to increase morale amongst the troops, although Shane found himself picturing school-dinners from his own childhood. That, he thought, might make all the difference.

  The snow was sheeting down now, whipping at their ears like miniature razorblades. If they were going to make a decision, now was the time.

  'Votes for the school?' Shane said, although he already knew the outcome.

  Six hands went up faster than a blink.

  Marla was already starting down the thin, winding pathway towards the building. Shane was about to call after her – at least warn her not to get too far ahead – when the first one leapt up out of the snow. Then a second, and a third.

  Before Shane had time to call out, Marla was swamped by them.

  Children.

  Miniature lurkers in matching uniforms.

  *

  Terry raced down the path, shotgun lifted, but there was no way he was going to fire. They were coating her, snapping at her arms and legs, and she was shrieking, trying to shake them off as if they were rabid ferrets and she was just the nice lady who fed and watered them. One of them – he must have been no older than six, although the darkness of his eyes suggested otherwise – flipped over from her back and somehow ended up lying in the snow at her feet.

  Despite having two others trying to clamber aboard, she raised a foot – the injured one? - and slammed it down squarely onto the face of the child-lurker. There was a squelch, and then she squealed out in horror as she realised that she had just put her heel through a kid's fucking forehead.

  'Marla! Don't let 'em scratch you!' Terry was shouting. He was still looking for a clean shot, but she was wearing the things like a fur-coat which made it impossible.

  Marla knew that she wasn't going to shake them off standing up. What was it they used to tell you to do if you were on fire? Stop, drop and roll? If it worked with flames, perhaps it would be just as effective with evil bastard children.

  She threw herself down to the snow; the mini-monsters on her back huffed and wheezed as she landed on top of them, before starting to growl and snarl once again as they snapped teeth in her general direction.

  Terry was hovering above her, now, and Shane was dragging at the feet of one of the creatures – the little girl one.

  Marla rolled to the right, and then to the left. The crazy part of her – the insane voice inside her head – said, Why don't you just make a snow-angel while you're down here? Huh? For shits and giggles...

  She ignored the madness and jabbed an elbow up and to the left, which is where it met the face of a seven year-old boy, although this face was different from that of an ordinary seven year-old as most of it exploded and fell away from the skull as her bony arm impacted.

  The thing cried out, not in pain but in anger. Its food was not playing nicely.

  'I've got this one!' Shane said as he dragged the little girl across to a clearing. The snow made pulling it – her, whatever – a helluva lot harder. It was like trying to drag a three-hundred pound fat man in an ice-rink.

  The girl, realising what was about to happen, tried to clamber to her feet, but it was too late. Shane fired once with the .22 and shattered its jawbone. The second shot put a red dot in the middle of the lurker's head, and she fell still, her mouth agape in a terrifying O.

  For a moment, Shane saw Megan in that face.

  He brushed it aside; it was – or had been – somebody's little girl, but not his...not today.

  He turned his attention back to Marla, who had managed to shuffle loose of the boy-lurker and was staggering to her feet.

  Terry, for a split-second, didn't know what to do. He had to fire. He had to take it out, but the look on his face said that he might not be able to do it. The shotgun was ready, cocked, ready to rock, but his arm was trembling.

  Jared was as far away from the action as possible. His experience with weapons was not good, and the small, wet-patch blooming on the front of his jeans pretty much summed up where he stood on getting involved.

  'Terry, DO IT!' Shane said.

  As the boy – no, it's not, not anymore, don't let the uniform fool you – snarled, black ooze dripped down the front of what was otherwise a perfectly-white shirt. It hadn't fed, not yet anyhow, and the prior cleanliness of its uniform was what had caused Terry to stutter momentarily.

  But now it was drooling...

  Black, thick sludge which brought the old man back to his senses.

  He fired; the blast echoed through the playground. The lurker, which was already missing some of its face from Marla's vicious elbow, flew backwards, everything from the neck up completely obliterated. It hit the snow with a thud and rolled a few feet, over and over. Terry breathed a sigh of relief as it came to a halt, face-down, a few feet away from a swing-set.

  And then it was silent once more.

  Silent, spooky, just another apocalyptic afternoon in good old Sandown, US of A.

  twenty

  'Down there,' Moon said as the chopper hovered low over the forest. 'Is that them?'

  Victor more-or-less flew towards the open door, grasping onto his massive second-in-command for stability. As he stared down into the darkening day, he saw it, the Snatch, the whole point of the expedition, crumpled to within an inch of its life.

  'Fuck!' Victor snapped. Moon sucked air in through his teeth as the captain's grip tightened on his arm. 'Those fucking assholes!'

  'Are they dead?' Randall asked, though he remained in his seat. He was, all-in-all feeling like shit-warmed up, and the last thing he wanted to do was get to his feet.

  'If they ain't,' Victor said, making his way to the cockpit. 'They sure as fuck goan be.'

  Kyle wasn't surprised to see the captain's head appear in his line of vision. The crashed Jeep down the embankment was always going to piss h
im off. What pleased Kyle, though, was that there was no sign of the group, and no real sign of injury around by the demolished vehicle.

  They had survived.

  'Take us down,' Victor said, although the way he spoke suggested he was close to just shooting somebody – probably Kyle – just to get it out of his system.

  'They're not down there,' Kyle said. 'I managed to get a good look on the first flyby, and I didn't see any sign of them.'

  'Did you see any fucking footprints on that first flyby?'

  Kyle shook his head. He hadn't, but even if he had he would have kept it to himself.

  'Then take us down. We need to figure out which way they went from here.'

  'Wait,' Kyle said, although he had already started to descend. 'The Jeep's fucked. What's the point? Why don't we just go back?'

  Hands, two of them, on the back of Kyle's neck. 'They fucked up my vehicle,' Victor hissed. 'Do you have any idea how important that fucking Jeep was? Of course you don't, and do you know why you don't? Because you weren't gonna be fucking invited, that's why. That was my ticket out of that goddam place. What, did you think I was gonna stick around forever, wiping asses and feeding ungrateful fucking mouths? Not a chance. I'm biding my time, and then we're out of there, and you can all go crawl back under whatever fucking stone you came from.'

  Well, that told him. He knew that it was only a matter of time before the military-men decided to go it alone, but he hadn't anticipated it so soon.

  'If this helicopter isn't on that snow in less than three minutes,' Victor concluded, 'you'd better start writing what you want on your tombstone.'

  Kyle was a gambler, a bit of a maverick, but he didn't fancy his odds here.

  He took the whirly-bird down.

  *

  Any tracks left by the deserters had vanished, so heavy was that afternoon’s snowfall. Victor had been annoyed even when he thought there was still a chance of recovering the Snatch; now he was positively unhinged.